America and infertility

I don't sleep any more. Instead I stay up late and the surf the internet, finding my way into bizarre websites about infertility / donor eggs / surrogacy. Most of these websites are American because the Americans talk about these things. In Europe it's all too embarrassing and nobody says anything. The details on these websites is incredible. You can search data bases of people who might give you an egg and you can put in your exact requirements. I want tall, slim, blonde woman who looks like a supermodel, speaks five languages and has a PHD. OK, feed that into the search and you'll be shown a photograph of a woman who fits that description and is willing to give you one of her eggs ..... Or apparently so. There is also a lot of details about costs - all the possible costs. Including what it will cost you if the surrogate gets pregnant with triplets and you want to abort one or more of the foetuses. Yeah, it gives you a cost for that - per foetus. Which is very precise, at least. Last night I clicked a button labelled financing and it took me into a site selling a number of different things - breast reduction, teeth whitening, getting your bald patch fixed .... and infertility. I showed this to my husband. 'Great,' he said. 'Why don't you get your boobs done, I'll get my teeth whitened and we'll buy a baby .... and then may we'll be eligible for some kind of discount.' Well, clearly, I'm taking the piss. But actually I'm deeply grateful to these websites and to the people in America who I e-mail. They e-mail straight back. They say, 'I'm sorry for your loss,' which people in England don't say. And they say yes and yes and yes. I like that very much. God Bless America. In England for the last four years all they've said is no and no and no - and then they've looked really embarrassed and hurried us out of the room.

The Almighty

I went to the Quaker Meeting House today and an elderly man told an interesting story. It goes like this. A vicar in a rural village went to call on an old man. They had a cup of tea and the old man then offered to show the vicar his garden. They went out together into the garden and the vicar was thrilled by the garden as it was stacked with flowers, fruit and vegetables. The vicar expressed his surprise and delight and then turned to old man and said, 'So what do you think that the Almighty has to do with this?' The old man thought for a while and then he said, 'Well, vicar, I really can't say. But I would comment that when this place was left to the Almighty it looked a really terrible mess.' I don't know why but this story appealed to me. It is quite typical of the Quakers who believe in getting on with it yourself, rather than relying on divine intervention.

Honey

My life has gone upside down. This is due to absolutely appalling news about my friend Honey. She was the person who started me off writing this blog - and she's been a great support to me over the last couple of years and now ....... It would be wrong for me to write anything about what is happening to her because she is telling her own story, on her blog, in her own clear, brave and humourous words ....... Her blog is called Honey Letting Off Steam and it is linked to mine. Honey is extra-ordinary - courageous, honest, loving and graceful. Thank God I am near enough to go and see her. I love her so much and I'm so privileged to be part of her life. Remember - if you do know her real name, don't use it. Send all your loving thoughts her way. She needs and deserves it all - and much more.

Days when it doesn't matter

My son just turned seven. He's an amazing child. One day, about a year after his sister died, he and I were walking down the street together. Suddenly he said to me, 'Mummy, can I say something to you?' I said, 'Yes, of course. You can say anything to me.' He said, 'Yes, but Mummy it's about Laura and I think maybe you won't like it.' I said, 'You can say whatever you want to say.' So this is what he said. 'You know, Mummy, some days it seems really, really sad about Laura but some day I just feel like it doesn't really matter at all.' I was amazed by his self awareness and honesty so I gave him a big hug and told him that what he said was absolutely right. And he is right. Absolutely spot on. I have days when Laura's death just seems huge and terrible and overwhelmingly sad. But there are also days - I admit it - when it really doesn't seem that big a deal. Days when I think, 'For goodness sake, a child is dying every eight seconds due to lack of clean drinking water in this world so just get over your little problem.......' And, in that moment, I can effortlessly bend my mind to that particularly geometry. But grief is - beyond all else - unpredicatable. I can never tell whether it will be 'an overwhelmingly sad' day or a 'perhaps it doesn't matter' day. And neither can I tell what apparently trivial incident might turn one kind of day into another ...... Often there isn't even an incident. Nothing happens but suddenly I'm in a state where the whole thing is so awful that my chest caves in and I'm gasping for breath.....

What other people want

Yesterday we went to the hospital again. They are very keen to push on us the donor egg idea. Apparently it has a very high chance of success. I can see that my husband is pretty interested in this. I've spent the last twenty four hours in tears. I phoned my Mum and she also thinks that I should be doing the donor egg thing. She tells me that the fact that the baby won't be my baby doesn't really matter at all. I think she's talking about her need for another grandchild, not what is really best for me. The truth is that I've never been anywhere near a new born baby since my daughter died. I find having to go anywhere near a hospital very traumatic. When I think about having a donor egg baby all I can envisage is lying there in a hospital bed, looking at the baby and thinking, 'No, I don't want that one.' I'm so confused and upset by all this. The choice seems to be between living with the pain of our daughters death forever - or doing the donor egg thing and finishing up with a baby which I might not want. Neither option looks good to me. Just to be clear, I'm not anti anyone else doing the donor egg thing. I just don't think it can improve our situation - and anyway it probably wouldn't even work. All we'd be doing is damaging ourselves further by creating the possibility for more disappointment.

Gloucestershire SANDS

When I moved back to England in September of last year I rang up SANDS (the UK Stillbirth and Neo-Natal Death Charity) to ask about a local support group. They told me that in the area where I live - Gloucestershire - there was no support group. I was pretty shocked. Gloucestershire has 250,000 people and it takes more than an hour and a half to drive right across it. So I decided that I would just have to set up a support group. There really wasn't any choice about it. I was exhausted by the move and I didn't know anyone here. I needed support, not the work involved with offering support to other people. But still I just knew I had to do it ..... Another bereaved Mum at school helped me and other bereaved Mums came in as well ..... And to cut a very long and tough story short ...... Gloucestershire SANDS has now been set up. You can find it at http://www.gloucestershiresands.org.uk/ The website was done for free by the husband of one of the other committee members. And last Tuesday was the first support group meeting. It was totally terrefying. It was too close the anniversary of my daughter's death...... But it worked. In fact, it was great. Well, as great as a Dead Baby support group can be. I know that it was really, really helpful to the people who came along. Now it is going to meet every month. Also one of the other committee members organised a ball which has raised loads of money. I don't want to sound big headed but I feel pretty proud. What I've learnt is that the line which supposedly divides the helper and the helped is so thin that it doesn't really exist. Some how I wasn't able to do anything much at all to mark Laura's anniversary - but Gloucestershire SANDS is a tribute to her.

Anniversary

Tuesday (19th May) will be the fourth anniversary of my dauthter's death. I was actually told that she would die on the evening of 18th May and then she was born dead at 3.00 the following day. So maybe the anniversary is really tomorrow. I don't know. One of the things that bothers me is that I'll never know exactly when she died. Oddly, I feel more or less OK. Exhausted and a bit shaky but not worse than that. We were in London for the weekend. We stayed at the house of friends and it was in that house, four years ago, that this whole nightmare began. I didn't go in their downstairs loo because that's where the bleeding started. I did walk in the park where I walked on that morning. The people who walked there then do not exist any more but I felt their shadows around the place. We haven't been to that house for the last four years. It wasn't a plan that we should go there at this time - just an unfortunate coincidence. Then today (still in London) we went to a big lunch party where there were lots of people with big happy families. I managed all right. I never said anything about the anniversary because those people can't really get it. None of it was too bad. It was just that sense which I often have - the sense that I am not occupying the same planet as other people. The kind of things which interest and concern other people don't seem relevant to me any more. I'm shut outside the whole thing, watching it. But I survived it. I suppose what bothers me about this anniversary is that we are still exactly where we were four years ago. Things did not move on, they didn' t change - or certainly not for the better. It was good to come back to our house this evening. I like this place, at least.